Navigate / search

By Jennifer Yang

Recently, The New York Times published an article on vaccination that has highlighted a resurging controversy. In late June 2014, a federal judge upheld a New York City policy barring unimmunized children from public schools, and objectors have decried the policy as an infringement upon their rights. In the United States, incomplete vaccination rates were highest among the poor until 1994, when the Vaccines for Children Program made it more affordable. Now, these rates are highest among the middle- and upper-classes, due to increasing philosophical and religious objections. However, such controversy is hardly new in the centuries-old history of vaccination. Documents in the Ransom Center’s collections cast historical light upon the modern vaccination debate.

In 1721 Boston, a smallpox epidemic generated an atmosphere of fear and suspicion when prominent physician Zabdiel Boylston began to counter the illness with vaccination methods. Cotton Mather, a prominent Boston clergyman, publicly declared his support of Boylston’s practices and encouraged other physicians to do the same. Outraged mobs believed vaccinators to be no better than murderers, and Boylston and Mather became subject to popular attacks, culminating in Boylston going into hiding with his family and practicing medicine in disguise. An assassination attempt made on Mather expressed the furious sentiments of the Bostonian public, as a bomb was thrown through his window with the affixed message “COTTON MATHER, You Dog, Dam you: I’ll inoculate you with this, with a Pox to you.”

Vaccination came into more prominence and credulity with the publication of English physician Edward Jenner’s An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae in 1798. Jenner made the observation that farmhands and dairy maids, exposed to cowpox disease through their daily work, seemed to possess immunity against the more severe disease of smallpox. Jenner conducted an extensive series of cowpox inoculation case studies, often following patients for several years and even inoculating his own 11-month-old son, to see if his hypothesis about the effects of vaccination were true. Jenner’s findings increased general confidence in vaccination, as he proved that cowpox inoculations from human to human could guard against smallpox, while previously patients were more dangerously inoculated directly with the smallpox virus or from diseased animal matter.

Jenner’s work contributed to the passing of the UK Vaccination Acts, key vaccination laws ranging from 1840 to 1907. The 1840 Act made vaccination free, while from 1853 to 1874 a series of more stringent acts made vaccination compulsory and even penalized objectors with fines and imprisonment. Anti-vaccination groups and protestors became more common in this period, as citizens were gripped by fears of the rumored spread of diseases such as syphilis through negligent vaccinators. Vaccination Brought Home to the People, an 1876 pamphlet by Miss Chandos Leigh Hunt, exclaims “If the devil delights in torturing, as it is represented, then indeed must he revel in Vaccination!” Pamphlets and lectures expressing such sentiments abounded as membership in anti-vaccination leagues and groups increased. A famous supporter against the UK Vaccination Acts was playwright George Bernard Shaw, who in 1906 wrote a fervent letter of support to the National Anti-Vaccination League, equating official methods of vaccination with “rubbing the contents of the dustpan into the wound.” Dissent was somewhat appeased by the Vaccination Acts of 1889–1907, which enforced regulation and safety measures for vaccination, as well as allowing for conscientious objection.

The Ransom Center also possesses many manuscripts on French scientist Louis Pasteur and his work on vaccination. Pasteur worked on a rabies vaccine from 1881 to 1885, experimenting on dogs, rabbits, apes, and eventually humans. A catalyst to his professional reputation came about in 1885, when Joseph Meister, a 9-year-old shepherd, was mauled by a rabid dog. Though Pasteur did not hold a license to practice medicine, he conferred with his colleagues about the possibility of treating the boy. His longtime friend and collaborator, physician Émile Roux, refused to work with him on the case. Finally, Pasteur found two eminent physicians who agreed to supervise the treatment. The boy recovered successfully, and Pasteur was lauded as a hero—he became nationally famous, with poets even writing odes to his genius, and went on to co-found the Pasteur Institute with Émile Roux on the laurels of his acclaimed scientific achievement.

Religious and philosophical objections have risen over the past decade, with religious exemptions for vaccinations nearly doubling in New York, and tripling in Ohio, where a measles outbreak spread throughout the Amish population. The nation has also seen a resurgence in measles and mumps, with the highest rate of measles since 1994. Debate over vaccination laws and compulsory policies in schools continues to rage, as fervent supporters arise to counter objectors in equal measure. Contemporary battles over vaccination controversy may find parallels in the past, as the centuries-old arguments and ideas resound in the modern voices of vaccination’s supporters and detractors.

Page 32 from “An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccine” by Edward Jenner, 1798. In Jenner’s 17th case study, he inoculates for the first time a healthy patient who has no previous exposure to cowpox or smallpox. “I selected a healthy boy, about eight years old, for the purpose of inoculation for the Cow Pox. The matter was taken from the sore on the hand of a dairymaid, who was infected by her master’s cows…”

Page 40 from “An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccine” by Edward Jenner, 1798. In the 22nd case study, Jenner’s 11-month-old son Robert was inoculated along with two other young children.

Page 36 from “An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccine” by Edward Jenner, 1798. Jenner’s book was supplemented by detailed, color engraving prints by artist William Skelton. These illustrations, corresponding to adjacent case studies in the book, show the characteristic sores and pustules of cowpox patients.

Cover of “Vaccination Brought Home to the People” by Chandos Leigh Hunt, 1876. Prolific anti-vaccination advocates produced an abundance of pamphlets, essays, and lectures in the late 1800s. “Vaccination Brought Home to the People” is an example of the common content of such pamphlets.

Page 29 of “Vaccination Brought Home to the People” by Chandos Leigh Hunt, 1876. Attacks on Jenner’s and other physicians’ characters and intentions were frequent in anti-vaccination arguments: “Jenner-ous Suggestion for the Benefit of the Jennerites: A little improvement would be to subject the doctors themselves to an annual or monthly vaccination as practiced and guaranteed by Jenner, and then we would have such a decimating of anti-Christ as would effectually rid us of this sulphurous host of Abaddon in one very short Jenneration.”

Page 35 of “Vaccination Brought Home to the People” by Chandos Leigh Hunt, 1876. Many saw vaccination as unsafe, dangerous, and deadly. In her conclusion, Chandos Leigh Hunt declares “If the devil delights in torturing, as it is represented, then indeed must he revel in Vaccination!”

Letter from George Bernard Shaw to Charles Gane, 1906. In this letter from Shaw to the secretary of the National Anti-Vaccination League, the famed writer vehemently and wittily presents his protests against contemporary vaccination methods in Britain.

“Le Glaneur, Mars 1889.” This issue of Le Glaneur, a French literary magazine, was formerly owned by Louis Pasteur and was likely sent to him as a gift. The issue opens with four poems written in homage to Pasteur, praising his successful rabies vaccine. The first poem, which was judged as the winner, ends with the phrase “Comme l’étoile dans l’orage/Tu planes plus haut que l’outrage/Et la Paix couronne ton front! (Like the star in the storm/You glide higher than outrage/And peace crowns your forehead!)”

“Dr. Roux” by Robert Kastor. Émile Roux worked with Pasteur for 17 years, beginning as Pasteur’s laboratory research assistant at age 25 and eventually becoming a co-founder of the Pasteur Institute. His signature may be seen to the bottom right of this portrait.

By Alex Feldman

Alex Feldman, an Assistant Professor in the English Department at MacEwan University, Alberta, visited the Ransom Center to consult the papers of George Bernard Shaw, Lillian Hellman, and Arthur Miller, among others. His research, supported by the Dorot Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Jewish Studies, focused on the dramatization of historical trials specifically those of Joan of Arc and the witches of Salem, in twentieth-century drama. The Ransom Center is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its fellowship program in 2014–2015.

The Ransom Center’s cataloging card describes the volume on my desk as a “Rough Proof” of George Bernard Shaw’s play Saint Joan (1923). On the title page—the book is missing a cover—a faint pencil inscription in Shaw’s hand reads, “the old copy showing where the corrections come.” According to Brian Tyson’s account of the play’s development (The Story of Saint Joan), the revisions that appear in this copy date from Shaw’s holiday in Parknasilla, County Kerry, in September 1923, three months before the play’s New York premiere and six months prior to its first performance in London. The ink annotation below, made almost eight years later, reads, “This is an authentic ‘revise’ for the printer, or possible [sic] a copy of one made by me as a precaution against the loss of the other…”

What this copy and its corrections reveal is that a collective voice of great prominence in Shaw’s trial scene was added at a very late stage in the play’s composition. Here, in Shaw’s hand, “The Assessors” make their first appearance.

Sixty or so French and English clerics of assorted order and rank, the assessors fulfilled a quasi-juridical function at Joan’s trial, acting in a consultative capacity under Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who presided over the proceedings, and Jean Lemaitre, vicar of the Inquisition at Rouen and Joan’s second judge. The likelihood is that, whether intimidated, coerced, or otherwise incentivized, many of the assessors could be counted on to lean, as Cauchon directed, in favor of Joan’s excommunication (and subsequent execution.) But their presence in Rouen and their substantial role in the trial did indicate a serious regard for procedural fairness. According to the trial transcripts, Cauchon, eager to present them as incorruptible, described the assessors as “ecclesiastical and learned men, experienced in canon and civil law, who wished and intended to proceed with [Joan] in all piety and meekness.” Shaw, by contrast, though he deviates from the melodramatic tradition that portrays the assessors as “malignant scoundrels,” presents them as a shrill chorus of righteously indignant imbeciles.

Here’s a representative interjection, which affords some insight into the rationale behind Shaw’s eleventh-hour additions to the text. Under Cauchon’s interrogation, refusing to disavow the heavenly provenance of her “visions and revelations,” Joan declares that she will continue to be guided by God’s will. “In case the Church should bid me do anything contrary to the command I have from God,” Joan declares, “I will not consent to it, no matter what it may be.” Here, in the proof copy, the following insertion appears (see below image):

THE ASSESSORS [shocked and indignant] Oh! The Church contrary to

God! What do you say now? Flat heresy. This is beyond everything.

The playwright isolates the objectionable detail—“The Church contrary to God!”—in case the audience has missed it, and offers it up to the spectator’s scrutiny once again, via the medium of the assessors’ protest. Here and throughout, the assessors perform a mediating function, clarifying, for Shaw’s audience, the nature of Joan’s heresy, as contemporary clerics perceived it. (See images below for further examples.)

The development of this choric voice, identifying and decrying Joan’s seminal transgressions, adds weight to the anti-Joan sentiment building throughout the trial among the clergy. The assessors’ interjections are crucial to Shaw’s establishment of his protagonist’s perceived theological-legal guilt (in the identification of her heresy), but they are also instrumental in advancing Shaw’s argument that the world is always unprepared for the saints in its midst. A rabble of censorious mediocrities, these men are not evil—“there are no villains in the piece,” Shaw insisted—but they do contribute to the sense that middlebrow opinion (ever the object of Shaw’s critique) and unthinking conformity to the conventional canons of belief create insuperable obstacles to the recognition of genius.

I am grateful to Jean Cannon and all of the staff at the Ransom Center for their expert guidance, to Willow White for her timely assistance, and to Sos Eltis and Peter Raby for their support of my fellowship application.

The pencil note reads “the old copy showing where the corrections come.” In ink below it: “This is an authentic ‘revise’ for the printer, or possible [sic] a copy of one made by me as a precaution against the loss of the other. I cannot account for its passing out of my hands. G. Bernard Shaw. 23/5/31”

Though Shaw made these revisions in September 1923, since he had not yet begun work on the Preface, and Constable & Co. were aware that this was to be a substantial undertaking, 1924 is printed here as the prospective date of publication.

"THE ASSESSORS: [whispering] Protestantism! What was that? What does the Bishop mean? Is it a new heresy? The English commander, he said. Did you ever hear of Protestantism? &c. &c."
Joan’s trial pre-dates the Reformation by almost a century, but in Shaw’s version of events, as he explains in the Preface, Joan was the first Protestant martyr, as indeed she was also the first French nationalist. Though the Earl of Warwick has used the word “Protestant” in conversation with Cauchon in the previous scene, the expression obviously means nothing to the priests.

"THE ASSESSORS: [shocked and indignant] Oh! The Church contrary to God! What do you say now? Flat heresy. This is beyond anything. &c. &c."
This page is the subject of the above discussion.

"THE ASSESSORS: [scandalized] Oh! [They cannot find words.]"
It is Joan’s determination to trust in her own judgment that appalls the assessors here. Throughout the play, Shaw treats Joan’s reliance upon her personal relationship with the divine, and her rejection of clerical intercession, as precursors to Protestantism.

"[The assessors cannot help smiling, especially as the joke is against Courcelles.]"
Thomas de Courcelles, Rector of the University of Paris and Canon of the Cathedral Chapters at Amiens, Laon, and Thérouanne, was one of Joan’s most blood-thirsty assessors (one of only three who voted in favor of torture) and is ridiculed by Shaw for his inability to disguise his obsession with sexual transgression.

"THE ASSESSORS: [in great commotion] Blasphemy! blasphemy. She is possessed. She said our counsel was of the devil. And hers of God. Monstrous! The devil is in our midst. &c. &c."
At this point, in Shaw’s version of events, Joan has damned herself past all salvation and will burn.

By Jean Cannon

You must have Javascript enabled and the Flash 8 plugin installed to view this content.

Consult your browser’s help file for instructions to enable Javascript.

Click on the four-way arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the slideshow to convert into full-screen mode.

According to popular mythology, the publisher Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books, formulated his idea for a press dedicated exclusively to paperbacks while visiting a railway station. Having spent the weekend visiting his friend Agatha Christie, the famed author of Murder on the Orient Express, Lane arrived at the Exeter railway station and realized he had forgotten his book. Frustrated and facing the boredom of a long train trip, Lane tried to buy a novel at the station but found that there was nothing available that he felt worth reading. Bookless for the next few hours, he sat on the train and planned a new line of cheap, pocket-sized, and travel-worthy books, which could be sold at railway stations, grocers, and department stores. Penguin Books—and the paperback revolution—were born.

While this version of Allen Lane’s epiphany may be slightly romanticized, there is no doubt that Penguin Books, launched in 1935, sparked a new phase of publishing that would change the printing industry irrevocably. Mass marketing of paperbacks not only brought classics to a wider audience but also brought pulp fiction—previously published in magazines—to the forefront of the book trade.

The Ransom Center’s book collection is known for first editions, many of them lush volumes with elaborate bindings. Perhaps lesser known is the fact that the Ransom Center also houses multiple volumes that illuminate the development of the paperback book trade in both America and Britain. Alongside important editions of Lane’s Penguins, the Center also houses Tauchnitz editions of paperbacks that pre-date Penguin, as well as the “penny dreadfuls” and dime novels that slowly developed into modern pulp fiction. This slideshow exhibits numerous items from the library’s collections that represent landmarks in the history of the paperback book trade.

By Io Montecillo

George Bernard Shaw's responses to a questionnaire about God. 1931. George Bernard Shaw collection.

Dr. Erik Tonning is Research Director of the “Modernism and Christianity” project at the University of Bergen, Norway. He visited the Ransom Center in June 2011 to view a range of its modernism holdings and to gather information on behalf of his research team from several of the Ransom Center’s rich collections.

Tonning writes about his research and his findings, including manuscripts that highlight George Bernard Shaw and D. H. Lawrence’s approaches to a new theology, as well as a letter from T. S. Eliot, one of the most famous modernist converts to Christianity.

By Stephen Watt

Stephen Watt is a Professor of English and Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, Bloomington. He spent the month of June reading both manuscripts and published works in the Ransom Center’s Irish literature and Judaica collections. The result of this and further research, he hopes, will be a scholarly monograph that examines cultural interactions between Irish and Jewish immigrants in later nineteenth-century America, particularly theatrical ones, and the ways in which Irish-Jewish relations of the early twentieth century help define our sense of modern and modernist writing. His research was funded by a fellowship from the Dorot Foundation.

Occasionally at the end of the evening, I find myself “channel surfing” on the television seeking a momentary diversion or, even better, an effective sedative. Over the years, The Late Show with David Letterman has reliably provided both, and I have often enjoyed a skit on the show entitled “Is it Something or Is t Nothing?” Typically, the “it” in question is some kind of bizarre performance or an unlikely combination of objects, and it occurs to me that the scholarly book might be described in just these terms: a bizarre performance and/or an assemblage of facts or ideas that, at least at first glance, don’t necessarily appear related. Perhaps more relevant, the gestation of a scholarly book—the emotional highs produced by a surprising discovery and discouraging lows caused by doubt or lack of confidence—often reminds me of the Letterman show’s question: Is the project “something,” an intellectual intervention or creative achievement of some consequence, or is it “nothing?”

The fortunate recipient of a one-month fellowship at the Ransom Center generously provided by the Dorot Foundation, I came to Austin with an idea for a monograph, the working title of which is Irish Schlemiels: The Irish-Jewish Unconscious and American Modernism. I hoped it was “something” or would become such, but I wasn’t certain. The genealogy of the project includes the phrase “Irish schlemiels” in a wonderful poem by Northern Irish writer Paul Muldoon; a problematic analogy in Bernard MacLaverty’s 1997 novel Grace Notes between the horrors of World War II and those of the “Troubles” in Belfast and Derry; and my ongoing interest in the representation of Irishmen and Jews on the later nineteenth-century popular stage, both in New York and in the Dublin of James Joyce and Sean O’Casey’s adolescence in the 1890s. How, for example, did post-Famine Irish immigrants in the 1850s and 1860s affect representations of the Irish in America? How did the later diaspora of largely Eastern European Jews arriving in America in the 1880s and 90s inflect the cultural work done by theater at the fin de siècle? How does the popularity in both America and Ireland of such plays as Paul Potter’s Trilby and widely-seen revivals of The Merchant of Venice relate to the emergent populations of immigrants in America? Most important, how does this cultural interface affect American drama and fiction of the modernist period?

To be a little more candid, I actually arrived in Austin with rough drafts of the chapters dealing with later nineteenth-century immigrant drama and theater. But I was uncertain if I could outline and structure effectively the chapters on modernist writing. The Ransom Center’s collections of the manuscripts of such figures as Elmer Rice, Edward Dahlberg, and, in a more theatrical vein, Stella Adler helped enormously in clarifying this matter. In fact, the center’s holdings of Jewish American and Irish writing are enormous; a scholar could spend a blissful summer reading materials on any one of these artists—or on George Bernard Shaw, Kay Boyle, or Samuel Beckett, all of whose works I read while in residence. Dahlberg and Rice in particular, both under-studied and underappreciated, grew to assume great importance in my plans, which now include a chapter on Joyce, Dahlberg, and Henry Roth; and another on Synge and Shaw, Rice and Adler.

But this scarcely describes the unique items—now exceptionally important to Irish Schlemiels—that I uncovered in the Ransom Center. These include Rice’s Shavian one-act play A Diadem of Snow, sandwiched in a 1918 issue of The Liberator between radical editorials concerning lynchings in the American South and Jack Reed’s reports from the revolution in Russia; Leslie Daiker’s remarkable “The Circular Road,” a radio play concerning a young Jewish Dubliner grieving over the shooting of his father during the civil war of the 20s; Stella Adler’s incisive and exhaustive workbook for actors of one of Synge’s masterpieces, Riders to the Sea; and an exchange of letters between Dahlberg and Kay Boyle that adds great clarity to the former’s complicated view of James Joyce in general and Ulysses in particular. All of these materials will contribute significantly to my book, as will countless passages I found in these and other writers’ works

Of course, no scholarship ever evolves in a vacuum. When I wrote my fellowship application, several essays in what might be called the “New Jewish-Irish Studies” had appeared, and today the list of works in this area has been graced by two recent and very considerable achievements: Mick Moloney’s album of Tin Pan Alley songs, If It Wasn’t for the Irish and the Jews, and George Bornstein’s study The Colors of Zion (Harvard, 2011). My Irish Schlemiels doesn’t look—or shouldn’t be mistaken for—either of these. But it is my hope that it will be “something,” not “nothing,” and that this emergent field will both grow in importance and promote greater understanding of the cultures of two immigrant groups that contributed so substantially to this country. In either case or in both, the Ransom Center collections and truly outstanding staff will have played and will continue to play a major, much appreciated role.

Please click on the thumbnails below to view full-size images.

Cover of the April 1918 edition of The Liberator, which includes Elmer Rice's one-act play A Diadem of Snow. Rice submitted the play with his original name, Elmer L. Reizenstein.

By Courtney Reed

In this video clip from a 1978 interview, J. B. Colson, Professor Emeritus of Journalism and Fellow of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, asks Helmut Gernsheim about his letter collection of famous and contemporary photographers, including correspondence with George Bernard Shaw. In this clip, Gernsheim discusses how he asked Shaw 20 questions about his interest in photography and Shaw’s response.

View the exhibition Discovering the Language of Photography: The Gernsheim Collection at the Harry Ransom Center through January 2. The galleries are open Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended Thursday hours until 7 p.m. On Saturdays and Sundays the galleries are open from noon to 5 p.m. The galleries are closed on Mondays.

In his lecture, Rose explores the relationship between politicians and literature. Are politicians’ agendas molded by literature? How far are their policies and tactics shaped by poetry, prose, and drama? Rose focuses on the career of Winston Churchill by examining the books he read. George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, John Galsworthy, and Siegfried Sassoon; The Red Badge of Courage, The Good Earth, Gone With The Wind, and 1984—these and many other books and authors exerted a powerful influence on Churchill and his brilliant career.

Rose is the William R. Kenan Professor of History at Drew University. He was the founding president for the Society of the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing. His publications include A Companion to the History of the Book (with Simon Eliot), The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, and The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation.

By Richard Oram

Timothy Ferris has recently blogged about Edmund Wilson’s “decline letter,” a form postcard listing all of the things the crotchety literary critic refused to do: read manuscripts, advise authors, address meetings, donate and inscribe books—the list goes on and on. The same postcard may be found in the Ransom Center’s collections, and on our copy Wilson has checked “WRITE ARTICLES OR BOOKS TO ORDER” and added “I have nothing interesting to say about Pound and haven’t been influenced by him.”

I have “collected” such items in the Center’s collections for several years without a pigeonhole (the catalogers like to call them “genre headings”) to throw them into, but now I do. The term “decline letter” has a certain rightness and precision about it. In my view, a decline letter shouldn’t be confused with a rejection letter (Ferris himself goes on to make this error in his blog). The purpose of a rejection letter is to turn down book manuscripts or deflate one’s aspirations of attending an Ivy League university. A decline letter, on the other hand, is a form letter used to decline all the various impositions on an author’s (or celebrity’s) time.

Authors are subjected to many annoying demands from various quarters, but the autograph collector is probably the most feared. In P. G. Wodehouse’s story “The Autograph Hunters,” the esteemed novelist Mr. Montagu Wilson “was notoriously a foe to the autograph-hunter. His curt, type-written replies (signed by a secretary) had damped the ardour of scores of brave men and—more or less—fair women.” Mr. Wilson could have employed a decline letter or postcard, sparing his secretary many hours of work.

Most of the examples of the genre I have seen in the Center’s manuscript collections are actually postcards. A printed postcard answer to an appeal is, by its very nature, a putdown even more offhanded than a form letter. The George Bernard Shaw collection contains a whole folder of these postcards, many of them with autograph revisions. Because of his fame and strong views on all topics, the playwright was constantly solicited by journalists and fans and had an entire repertoire of brightly-colored decline postcards. A form postcard on vegetarianism, though not a decline card, carries a handwritten addition to the printer: “Any color except pink!”

Evelyn Waugh spent most of the later part of his career escaping from London literary life and importunate autograph seekers, aspiring authors, and Americans of all descriptions. Yet the mail still had to be dealt with, and Waugh eventually developed a card carrying this notice: “Mr Evelyn Waugh deeply regrets that he is unable to do what is so kindly proposed.”

Even more mild-mannered authors, such as Marianne Moore, could be driven to the use of decline postcards. Moore’s list* includes “recommend editors favorable to verse by children or work bequeathed for publication,” suggesting that she had received more than a few requests along this line.

I expect that few contemporary writers use decline postcards; they simply ignore annoying requests or have a form email on file for the same purpose. Too bad—at its best the decline postcard is a small gem of negativity.